A reader emailed me in response to last week’s article, The “can do” skill, a story about an accountant who decided she wanted to pursue a career as an article writer.

Her decision, as well as the actual career shift, had almost been instantaneous. She had virtually decided overnight to become a freelance writer, and, in what seemed like a very short time later, was out there doing it.

The reader admitted she was more than just a little envious of this particular career change story, as she has been struggling for the past couple of years to find new career direction, and was pondering how some people can have it “so good”, and almost seem to have the next moved mapped out.

I have to admit I myself was likewise a little envious when I first heard the story, and it bought back less than pleasant memories of the difficulty I’ve had in finding career direction through the years.

But then again I was one of these people who has never known what they wanted to do for work, or as a career, for as long as I can remember.

Or so I thought.

There were always clues as to what I wanted to be doing now, but it took the longest time to put the pieces of the “puzzle” together.

As I have written here before, I knew I wanted to do something that was creative, and also something that allowed me to do my own thing, and to be a free agent, or mostly so anyway.

Anyone reading this blog would think the “creative” part of the equation is the writing I do here. And they would be mostly correct.

But writing was a very overlooked part of my career puzzle for a long time, despite numerous pointers it was in-fact an integral part of it, pointers which go back my high school days.

In my final year of high school, our English teacher would give the class a weekly essay assignment, and we had to write 500 words according to a topic of his choosing.

Once the assignments were returned and he had reviewed them, he would read out the one he liked the most, without naming the writer. Mine used to come out at least once every other week, sometimes even weekly.

Perhaps the one enjoyable thing I (care to) recall of my high school days was sitting nonchalantly during the reading, while other classmates were quietly pointing at each other, trying to ascertain whose work it was!

Instead of following this “talent”, and trying to develop it further at the time, I felt under pressure to take a “nine-to-five” job, any job, once I left school, and settle into a “proper” career. There was no time to pursue “silly” writing desires now, I now had a career as bank teller to consider!

That “career” went the unsuccessful way, some people had called it would from the onset, a few years later!

But the inclination to write isn’t my only career motivator. I wanted to be doing my own thing also, not just writing. I’m really no geek, but the element of web design or development, that maintaining this blog, plus my other projects, requires is also a part of the puzzle.

Perhaps also the feeling (whether actual or imagined) that I am making some sort of difference, and hopefully being of assistance to readers here is another aspect of it.

I wrote back to the reader and told her that finding career direction can sometimes be like putting a puzzle together and to persevere with her search.

Unlike the accountant turned article writer who knew in a word, as it were, what she wanted to do for a new career, some of us may have to link up apparently random ideas to solve our career puzzle.